Travers High
by Detective Kaoru
Summary: Series of loosely connected one-shots about Cloud, Leon and others in high school. Cleon.
1. Chapter 1: in which Leon is very cold

Ch. 1: In which Leon is very cold

"Strife!"

"…hm?" Cloud turned to see Leon behind him in the hallway.

"Give me your sweatshirt."

"What?"

"Give me your sweatshirt," Leon repeated.

"…Why?" Cloud asked.

"Because I'm COLD!" Leon burst out, shivering and rubbing his arms to illustrate this fact.

"Where's your jacket?" Cloud asked observantly. Leon ALWAYS wore his jacket, but there he was in just a plain white t-shirt. Cloud had thought it just a sort of accessory that Leon couldn't do without for the sake of his self-image, but apparently it kept him warm despite it having short sleeves. Cloud wasn't entirely sure which was more pathetic- Leon wearing accessories for his ego or having a sensitivity to the weather akin to an old lady.

"Some bastard STOLE it," Leon moaned, "out of my gym locker, which I'm pretty sure I locked…"

"Don't you have a spare or something? You wear the thing every day. It can't possibly be the same one," Cloud teased. The sarcasm was obviously lost on Leon in the midst of his crisis, however, as he replied,

"I USED to, I lost the other one last summer at the beach… stupid starfish…" Leon trailed off muttering to himself, evidently very upset.

Cloud blinked and stifled a snicker. Was he joking?

"Anyway, just give me your sweatshirt," Leon continued, having regained his focus. "I'm freezing."

"Fine, fine…" Cloud took off his black Travers High track hoodie and handed it to Leon, who grabbed it immediately and pulled it over his head.

"Ah…" he said with a final shiver. "Wow, these things are warm," he said in surprise. Cloud wondered if Leon had ever tried wearing anything other than his jacket to keep warm. Then he wondered if he would ever get his hoodie back. Then he shrugged and turned around with a smirk that Leon couldn't see (and wouldn't have anyway because he was too immersed in the coziness of Cloud's sweatshirt) and headed to an undisclosed location to skip school for the next period.

Leon, on the other hand, was in such a good mood due to the fuzzy texture against his skin that he actually decided to go to class.

He heard a giggle as he took his seat in math class, which wasn't really strange at all considering Yuffie sat behind him.

"Why is Leon wearing Cloud's sweater?" she "whispered" to the girl next to her (she wasn't very good at whispering, except stage whispers, which was perhaps just as well since she tended to have lead roles in most of the theatre productions, but was also somewhat unfortunate in the gossip community).

Leon stiffened slightly as he realized the implications that would be going through Yuffie's head right about now, and mentally slapped himself for not realizing that he was wearing a track sweatshirt that very obviously had "STRIFE" printed across the back in big, white, contrasting letters.

"Do you think they're dating or something?" Yuffie asked her friend, barely concealing a squeal. Most of the girls at Travers High School had some kind of obsession over Cloud or Leon, but Yuffie was the only one (to Leon's knowledge) that wanted the two of them to get together.

Leon briefly considered taking off the sweater, but his hate of the cold quickly won over his embarrassment. The math room was always the coldest, anyway. Instead, he pulled up the hood, in an attempt to hide his face. He immediately regretted this a moment later however, when the bell rang, and the teacher walked up the front of the room to take attendance and said, "Leonhart, please remove your hood, no hats or hoods in school." Naturally, the whole class turned to look at Leon, who didn't normally have a hood at all, and noticed the out-of-place-on-several-levels sweatshirt.

The classroom broke out into various mutterings of "Wait, why is Strife in our class?", "Why is Leon wearing Cloud's sweatshirt?", "Since when does Leon do track?", "Are they dating?", "Ooh, I wonder if they've kissed yet," (Yuffie), "Where's my eraser?", "Didn't know Leon was that side of the fence,", and "I think it's under your foot."

"I. was. COLD!" Leon all but shouted, and stormed out of the room. The whole class blinked simultaneously. Aerith, the TA, simply shrugged knowingly and started writing an equation on the board that involved seven dwarves and the affect of whistling on their rates of work.

A black object suddenly appeared in front of Cloud's nose, and he looked up to see his hoodie dangling from a slightly trembling hand.

"Leonhart?"

"…You can have your sweatshirt back," Leon mumbled, his hair obscuring his red face.

"Won't you be cold?" asked Cloud sincerely.

"…I think I can deal with i," Leon said grudgingly.

"If you say so," Cloud shrugged with a smirk.

Leon walked away shivering until he got outside and put the heated seats on in his red sports car.

"I knew it would be good for him to go without his jacket for a day," Cloud mused to himself as he wedged his English binder into his locker with some effort. Leon's jacket took up a surprising amount of space.


	2. Chapter 2: in which the true ingredients

Ch 2: In which the true ingredients of cafeteria food are discovered.

The lunch bell rang, and, as usual, Cloud was the first out of the classroom. Typically this was true because Cloud hadn't been in the classroom to begin with; today however, Cloud had actually decided to grace his Government class with his presence.

Leon reached his locker soon after Cloud. Leon's locker however, had a deep loathing for him and always refused to open for him until he had tried his combination at least seven times, stroked it, and whispered soothing words. Much to the amusement of Cloud, of course, whose locker was right next to Leon's and was already closed again after Cloud was done with it.

"Tsk, tsk," Cloud tutted, clapping him on the shoulder as he left for lunch, "You need to get better with your hands, or she'll never open up for you."

Leon's groaned as his locker failed to open for the ninth time and his mind was tossed into the gutter to sit with Cloud's, where they discussed twisted things and sipped cocktails to see which of them would implode first. Brains have very messed up sorts of drinking games.

Cloud entered the cafeteria, oblivious to his brain's leisure activities, and scouted out the best place to eat. He spotted a freshman, Sora, sitting with his sophomore boyfriend Riku at a table nearby, and walked over.

"Hey, boys, what's for eats?" he asked, taking a seat across from them.

"Hi, Cloud!" That kid certainly had a lot of energy. Cloud stole one of his fries.

"_Cloud!_" Sora protested. Cloud raised an eyebrow pointedly at the mountain of food on his pink tray, which very clearly explained his amount of energy but made one wonder how he remained so thin.

"Yeah, well, I'm hungry," said Sora, as if that created the possibility that a human being could actually consume that amount of food in one sitting.

Cloud rolled his eyes and took a hotdog. However, he wasn't paying very close attention and Sora moved the tray just at that moment to try to stop him from stealing his food, causing said popular food item to fly into the air and hit the floor.

And bounce.

And bounce.

And…bounce.

The three teens looked on in bafflement, as did several other tables of high schoolers, before looking back down to their own food and pushing it away in confused disgust.

Cloud snickered, but Leon miraculously showed up at that moment and smacked him over the head with his lab notebook, which he had finally extracted from his loathsome locker, and stopped Cloud from making any number of lewd comments.

The hotdog finally stopped bouncing and rolled away until it hit a trash can in the corner, where nobody bothered to pick it up and drop it in.

Back at the lunch table, Sora looked down at the rest of his food, wondering which, if any, of the items was actually edible. Finally he settled on an ice cream bar which he unwrapped at began to lick happily.

Riku, on the other hand, was looking quite glum as he stared down at his greasy piece of square pizza, which didn't look like much of a delicacy to begin with, and wondered what it could possibly be made of.

He dropped a napkin on top of the "cheese", and it immediately absorbed an obscene amount of grease and was soaked as a sponge. He shoved the tray away from him slightly with a grimace of disgust.

"What do you think it's made of, Hotdog? My guess is cardboard, shampoo and dried glue," Cloud said helpfully.

Leon, whom he had been addressing, replied, "I'd say conditioner, actually- based on the level of cohesiveness."

Cloud looked up at the brunette and was surprised to see that he seemed perfectly serious.

"Uh… right. Anyway. Sorry I stole your food, Sora."

"It's okay- you totally saved my life from the rubber hotdog of doom. I think I'll bring lunch from now on…" mused the freshman, still licking his ice cream.

"Good to know," Cloud muttered to himself. "What d'you got, Hair-enthusiast of Doom?" he asked, again addressing Leon, "Me and Riku here are still hungry."

"I am too!" said Sora, raising his hand and waving it as if that were at all necessary, still licking his ice cream.

"I have… Damn it! I left my lunch in my stupid locker!" Leon kicked the table leg, exclaimed in pain, and heard Cloud laugh.

"No matter," Cloud said, standing up. "This is why our school is only a block away from Subway. Let's go." And he got up and left the cafeteria without waiting to see if they were following him. Leon of course practically knew that was coming and was just a few steps behind him, and Sora and Riku only had to exchange one long conflicted glance before they got up simultaneously, took each other's hand (Sora's other hand was still holding his ice cream), and followed the two Juniors out of the cafeteria.

And so it was that Sora skipped his first class, the entire school stopped buying lunch, Leon gained a strange new nickname, Cloud gained a peculiar insight into Leon's apparently extensive knowledge of hair products, Riku developed a strong addiction to the cold-cut combo on Italian bread (with pickles and mayonnaise), and Leon's locker became a "she".


	3. Chapter 3: in which breakfast is discuss

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or its characters. Obviously.

Ch 3: In which breakfast is discussed

"How goes the hellish life of a seventeen-year-old angsty adolescent, muffin?" Cloud asked cheerfully as he leaned against his locker across from Leon, who was on the floor trying to organize his Spanish binder, in which a grenade seemed to have gone off.

"A seventeen-year old angsty adolescent muffin?" he asked.

"There was a comma, pancake. There was a comma." Cloud dumped his binder on top of his locker and started turning his combination lock.

"Why am I breakfast?" said Leon, having finally salvaged his Spanish papers and standing up.

"Because," said Cloud as his locker opened and he began stuffing things inside, "you're so delicious looking I decided I just had to eat you first thing in the morning."

"I see," said Leon, who was used to these things, "Well I'll catch you later," and he turned to leave.

"But, cupcake! You haven't even let me see your math homework yet," Cloud exclaimed, shutting his locker dramatically.

"Sorry, _waffle_, but I have a presentation next block to prepare for," said Leon, playing along resignedly. The aforementioned hellish lifestyle was, well… hellish, indeed. Leon hated doing presentations in Spanish class.

" 'Waffle?' " Cloud wasn't sure whether to laugh at Leon's failure or be totally aghast at his butchering of the trend of cute foods. But he laughed a bit anyway.

"What's the matter with it? We were doing breakfast foods, weren't we?" Leon asked defensively.

"Yeah well "waffle" obviously doesn't fit well at all as a term of endearment!"

"Why does it have to be a term of endearment? You're calling me_ breakfast_, for God's sake," Leon retorted. Spanish definitely put him in a bad mood, but then, it wasn't unlike the two of them to get into a heated argument over breakfast foods.

"Can't you tell that's a compliment? Few people cause me to resort to cannibalism," Cloud said seriously.

"Now I'm going to Spanish, and I'm not letting you see my math homework," Leon said, ignoring Cloud's comment, and stormed off down the hall.

"You're a real donut-hole, y'know that?" Cloud called after him. Then he opened Leon's locker (which always opened easily when he tried, much to Leon's chagrin) and took his math homework, copied the answers, and went on his way.


End file.
